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Yu, Wenrui (Calvin)

Dr. Karen Carlisi
ESL 33B
17th November 2015
Police Brutality
Introduction
The United States Civil Rights Commission reviewed the use of force by the police in the
early 1980s and reported that the police had tremendous powers in their hands. The mandate
bestowed upon the police by the government to maintain order is a hard task. The police carry
out this mandate under perilous conditions. The officers are only allowed to commit a little
margin of error, yet they are expected to make judgment under situations of high degrees of
mental and physical stress. This makes them to use deadly force at times when it is not necessary.
The force they can use can either be physical force or psychological force. This paper is going to
deal with the use of physical force. During the first week of September, about ninety nine
civilians lost their lives at the hands of police officers. Seventy seven of the ninety nine who died
were shot and killed. Eight hundred and seventy three lives have been lost this year, 2015, due to
police misconduct and brutality so far. The number of people who suffer and even lose their lives
due to police brutality and mishandling has been growing steadily over the past decade. What is
shocking is that the police departments still maintain that the officers are innocent and it is the
victim who warranted the use of deadly force and brutality when they are getting arrested. A
nineteen year old boy, Keith McLoad, was fatally wounded by a bullet by a police officer. The
police officer who committed this act says that he saw Keith reach out to his back in a manner
suggesting that he was drawing out a handgun. Baltimore County confirmed the allegations of

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the officer and said that footage from surveillance cameras show Keith drawing out a weapon
from his back and quickly pointing it to the officer. To date, no weapon has ever been found at
the scene. This incident took place close to where a twenty-five year old civilian, Freddie Gray,
died of a spinal injury while in police custody. From the two incidents, there seems to be a trend
in police brutality and collusion of police officers to hide evidence and protect their own. The
dynamics involved in the prosecution of police officers should be changed in order to curb police
brutality on blacks and immigrants
The Legal Treatment of Police Brutality
Previous research findings agree on the fact that cases of police brutality have been
increasing at an alarming rate. Authors Alpert, Weitzer and Collins agree that the main reason for
this is unclear rules and ambiguous guidelines that guide the police. According to Alpert, the
amount of force that can be termed as excessive has been left to the interpretation of each and
every officer. Therefore, what one officer considers as brutal may be considered by another
officer as force within bearable limits (Alpert 481). In fact, the rules have not been written down
for all the federal police forces. Weitzer says that the duty of setting the rules has been left to
many bodies that lack an umbrella code of laws for the entire United States (402). Up to date,
there has never been any universally agreed-upon definition and guidelines on the use of force.
There has been no clear distinction on what force can be termed as allowable and what force
amount of force can be termed as brutal. The International Association of heads of police has
defined use of force as the amount of effort required by an officer of the law to compel an
unwilling subject to comply. The guidance is only offered by scattered individual agencies, and
so far, police officers do not have universal rules that should guide their conduct and determine
when officers should use force during criminal apprehension and to what extent the officers are

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allowed to use the force. However, Collins acknowledges that no two situations can ever be the
same, nor any two police officers. Therefore, in a situation that has a high potential of threat to
the officer, any officer is expected to respond quickly to the situation and apply the use of force
to force the suspect into submission (Collins 1). Despite the fact that police officers should only
use an amount of force that is just sufficient to facilitate an arrest, many officers are still applying
an unreasonably high amount of force that is way beyond the resistance that the suspect is
displaying. For instance, Weitzer reports of a case where a police officer shot a suspect simply
because he refused to be handcuffed. The level of force that a law enforcement officer should use
varies with the situation in which the police officer is in. The variation means that the guidelines
on the use of force will be based on a wide range of factors including the officers experience
and level of training. According to Alpert, the goal of an officer when making an arrest is to
regain control of the situation as soon as possible so that the community can be protected. But
that does not mean that excessive force should be used anyhow. The officer should resort to the
use of force after all the other cases have proved to be ineffective. Unfortunately, this is not the
case in the field. Many officers use excessive force even when the suspect is compliant to the law
enforcement officer (Greene 175). Alpert and Collins agree that the term excessive force is in
itself hard to define. The fact that there is no national database with the records incidents and
shootings of when police have used excessive force makes the situation worse (Babovic 376).

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Source: http://www.policemisconduct.net
Many scholars agree that it is very difficult to successfully prosecute an officer of the law
in the Courts. Panwala has attributed this to the existing statutory burdens of proof and
difficulties faced by people who want to obtain convictions (639). For instance, it is very hard to
successfully prosecute a police officer in the New York Jurisdiction. Locke notes that in New
York, the prosecutors are prohibited from interrogating officers of law who are subjects of an
investigation until two days (48 hours) elapse after the incident. He says that this is time is very
long and it gives the police an opportunity to collude and confer among themselves and with
their attorneys. This is obstructive to justice and reduces the chances of the victim of abuse to
have a just hearing in a court of law. Locke laments that under the federal law, the prosecutor
cannot present a case that argues that an officer of the law acted with criminal negligence or with

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recklessness. Instead, the enforcer of the law will be charged with violation of the civil rights of
the abused pursuant to USC 241 and 242. In Screw vs United States, the Supreme Court held that
a conviction under 242 required evidence that the defendant specifically had the intention to
deprive the abused of his constitutional right (Locke 625). Davis notes that the federal law
discourages the prosecution of police officers. Under the federal law, the burden of proof is on
the prosecutor who must prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the police used excessive force,
and that the officer had intended to do so. The requirement to prove that the police officer had
intended to be abusive is an unnecessary evidentiary burden must be met by the federal
prosecutor (Davis 271). Davis and Panwala have made the observation that the court process is
made worse by uncooperative police witnesses. Due to the fact that it is the police that
investigate themselves in such criminal proceedings, the guilty officers are sure that fellow
police officers will either verify the cover story or will choose to remain silent.
The case of Rodney King best exemplifies police brutality that goes unpunished, denying justice
to the victim. Rodney King is a former taxi driver who operated his cab in the Los Angeles
jurisdiction. He was stopped by police officers for a routine check, but he refused to stop. He
engaged the police officers on a high speed chase for about three hours and when they finally
caught up with him he was still unresponsive to the orders that the police officers were giving
him. The four officers who had engaged him in a speed chase decided to act violently. They
surrounded him and some of the police officers hit him repeatedly. A person videotaped the
whole incident and sent video footage to a nearby news station, KTLA. The four officers were
arraigned in a court of law and charged with the use of excessive force, and with assault using a
deadly weapon. However, to the shock of many people, all the four police officers were acquitted
of all their charges.

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Racial Victimization in Police Brutality
Palmiotto notes that the use of force by police officers is mainly aimed at minority
groups, showing that there is bias in policing. In fact, he makes the observation that 87% of the
civilians shot by police officers under questionable circumstances by the Los Angeles Police
Department officers were African-Americans, Asian, Latinos or Pacific Islanders (Palmiotto 52).
The discrimination in policing has also been observed by Dudley. He has noted that the AfricanAmericans are arrested three times as much as Caucasians (Dudley 68). Dudley also notes that
Caucasian police officers used violence and excessive force on black people approximately twice
every week. It should be noted that this figure should be considered lenient given the fact that it
was police officers themselves who reported this to their departments.

Source: sunlightfoundation.com/
When the New York City stop-and-frisk policy was extant, approximately 85% of stops
were carried out on Hispanics and blacks (Yale 1845). The New York Police Department had

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also set quotas for arrests, and the main targets were blacks and Hispanics. Cheney notes that
approximately 92% of the use of stun guns by police officers in the Chicago Police Department
targeted blacks and Latinos. In fact, in the first six months of 2014, 78% of the targets of stun
guns were African-Americans. Chaney and Ray also note that it is very hard for a police officer
in Chicago to be held accountable for allegations of physical abuse or misconduct (492).

Source: mic.com/
In July of 2013, police officers met with an African-American while they were headed to
arrest someone else in a nearby apartment building. The police knew full well that the AfricanAmerican male citizen was not the person that they were heading to arrest. However, they
ordered the man to give his details. When the man refused, some of the officers slapped him and
handcuffed him by force. They then put him at the back of the patrol car. After arresting the other

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suspect, they were shocked to learn that the man that they had forcefully handcuffed was the
landlord to the white suspect that they had come to arrest. The man later filed a lawsuit against
the officers for racial discrimination an unlawful detention. One of the officers in his defense
said that what they had one to the black was minimal and that he was lucky he was put in the
back of a patrol car with excellent aeration. The police officers were acquitted of all charges.
Recommendations and Conclusion
The reason for the prevalence of the police brutality is the ambiguous guidelines that are
used to determine if the officer has used excessive force. The ambiguous guidelines can be done
away with, and in their place there can be rules that are very clear on what the police officers
should do in different situations. The clarity of the rules will mean that any police officer who
deviates from the set guidelines will be guilty of human rights violation. There is bias in the use
of excessive force by police officers. Caucasian police officers target the blacks, Hispanics,
Latinos and the Pacific Islanders. This profiling is rooted in hostility between Caucasians and
blacks and immigrants. To ameliorate this hostility between the enforcers of the law and some
members of the community, there should be changes in the recruitment process for the police
officers. There should be careful screening of applicants and a statutory provision to allow more
blacks and immigrants to be recruited. It is difficult to successfully prosecute an officer of the
law because of the current statutory obligations and collusion among police officers to assist
each other in withholding the evidence. To bring an end to this, the statutory provisions that give
immunity to errant police officers should be scrapped off. Also, the judges should be instructed
to stop favoring police officers in the court.

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Works Cited
Alpert, Geoffrey P., and William C. Smith. "How Reasonable Is The Reasonable Man?: Police
And Excessive Force." Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1994): 481-501. Print.
Babovic, Budimir. "Police Brutality Or Police Torture." Policing: An International Journal of
Police Strategies & Management 23.3 (2000): 374-380. Print.
Chaney, Cassandra, and Ray V. Robertson. "Racism and Police Brutality in America." Journal of
African American Studies 17.4 (2013): 480-505. Print.
Collins, Allyson. Shielded From Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United
States. Human Rights Watch, 1998. Print.
Davis, Peter L. "Rodney King and the Decriminalization of Police Brutality in America: Direct
and Judicial Access to the Grand Jury as Remedies for Victims of Police Brutality When
the Prosecutor Declines to Prosecute." Md. L. Rev. 53 (1994): 271. Print.
Dudley, William. Police brutality. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1991. Print.
Greene, Judith A. "Zero Tolerance: A Case Study of Police Policies and Practices in New York
City." Crime & Delinquency 45.2 (1999): 171-187. Print.
Locke, Hubert G. "Police Brutality and Civilian Review Boards: A Second Look."J. Urb. L. 44
(1966): 625. Print.
Palmiotto, Michael. Police Misconduct: A Reader for the 21st Century. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.
Panwala, Asit S. "Failure of Local and Federal Prosecutors to Curb Police Brutality,
The." Fordham Urb. LJ 30 (2002): 639. Print.
Weitzer, Ronald. "Incidents of Police Misconduct and Public Opinion." Journal of Criminal
Justice 30.5 (2002): 397-408. Print.

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Yale, Rob. "Searching for the Consequences of Police Brutality." S. Cal. L. Rev. 70 (1996): 18411852. Print.